What prevents me? | Sunday Sermon

Well, we are in the book of Acts, and we have gotten through chapter 7.

We've been in chapter 8.

This will be our final um movement through the chapter 8 of the gospel or the uh the book of Acts.

And up to this point, um, we've seen Stephen uh get dragged before the Sanhedrin.

We've seen him testify to Jesus before the Sanhedrin without any fear at all.

We've seen him stand in the face of death and just have eyes fixed upon Jesus, not afraid at all, but just trusting in the Lord.

And we saw him be martyred.

And as he was dying, he said, Lord, please don't charge the sin against them.

And he said, Jesus, receive my spirit.

And from that point, Saul and others like him began ravaging the church.

They were going into people's houses, they were dragging off men and women, and they were committing them to prison.

Later in the book of Acts, we're gonna see Paul say that some of them even ended up being committed to death.

And so people are being martyred left and right now, and the church begins to scatter.

But as they scatter, we read, I believe, last week, that they began to preach the word.

Everywhere they went, they were preaching the word.

And Philip went down to the area, went up actually from Jerusalem to the area of Samaria.

And he began preaching the word there, and it said that the crowds were excited about what they were hearing from him, and then the Lord, the Holy Spirit, was confirming his testimony with signs and wonders.

And so people are getting healed, you know, there's amazing miracles happening, demons are even coming out of people, and there it says they're screeching out of people with a loud voice.

And so they're seeing this stuff happen right before their eyes.

Even this guy named Simon the magician, so he was somebody that had like his bag of tricks, you know, like Felix back in the day.

If you're old enough, you remember Felix the cat, he had his bag of tricks.

So he had his bag of tricks, and so he would do illusions or whatever he was doing before people, but even he was amazed and ended up believing in being baptized.

And so Philip is in the midst of this big move of God in the area of Samaria, and the Holy Spirit's moving, and people are coming to faith, and there's salvation that's happening, and it's in the middle of this that we come to verse 26, and it says, Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, Rise and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place.

Okay, so he's in the middle of this move of God, he's in the middle of this powerful move of ministry, and an angel of the Lord appears to him and he says, Okay, I want you to leave everything that's happening here.

All the momentum, all the favor you have, all these moves of the Holy Spirit, all the gifts of power that are being displayed.

I want you to leave this, and I want you to go down some old, unused, abandoned road down to Gaza, because Gaza had been destroyed by Alexander the Great.

Okay, and so he tells him, go down this old desert road to this dry and dusty place, and he doesn't tell them why.

He just says, go.

And so it says, and he rose and went.

That's kind of a novel idea, isn't it?

Sometimes we want to know why, right?

We want to know why.

God, why do you want me to do this thing?

Why do I feel like you're telling me to do this?

It doesn't make sense to me, and it's almost like, why don't you tell me your idea, God, and I'll let you know whether it's a good one.

But Philip doesn't do this.

It says he just rose and he went, and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candice, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all of her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship, and he was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

And so he rises and he goes, and he goes to this desert place, and lo and behold, God had an actual reason for it.

God didn't tell him the reason, did he?

He just told him to go, and it was up to Philip to trust.

And so Philip goes and he sees this Ethiopian traveling in a chariot.

And it tells us a little bit about this Ethiopian.

That he was an Ethiopian.

What that means is he was an African man.

Okay?

So he is an African man.

He's a eunuch.

He is a court official under Candicee.

Okay, so Candacey was the name of the queen of Ethiopia.

Now, in Ethiopia, they believed that the king was so divine, so high and mighty, so exalted that he shouldn't be bothered with the normal business uh uh of managing the kingdom.

And so they always allowed the queen.

They called her Candice, they gave her this title, and really she was the one who effectively ruled the kingdom.

And so this Ethiopian eunuch was a member of her cabinet, basically.

He was her treasure.

He was in charge of all of her treasury.

Okay, so he was somebody that she trusted.

Okay, now he was a eunuch.

What this means is they had been castrated, maybe at a young age.

And sometimes in other countries, now this had been outlawed in Israel.

This was not something that was practiced by the nation of Israel, but sometimes in other cultures they did do this.

And they would do this to a boy or a man, and they would do it so that they could trust him to watch over maybe the king's harem.

And as they they served in things like this, they would sometimes be exalted to these high positions.

Okay, and so this was one of those who had been placed in a position like that.

It also says that he had been to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, and so he was a worshiper of the God of Israel.

So this is not just some Gentile pagan, some worshipper of foreign gods.

This was a man who worshipped Yahweh, the God of Israel.

And he had traveled to Jerusalem to worship God and was returning from Jerusalem.

And it says that he was reading the scroll of Isaiah.

That would have been a crazy expensive thing for him to have.

And so this was a wealthy, influential man.

You know, where he came from, this man was very much entrusted with important things within the kingdom.

And it says, the spirit said to Philip, Go over and join this chariot.

And so Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, Do you understand what you're reading?

I don't know why, but I had in my mind as I see this that the Ethiopian, he's not driving his chariot.

Don't think of like, you know, Ben Hur when you hear the word chariot, okay?

This is not just some lonely soldier in his chariot.

This is a high-ranking official.

He is not the one driving.

Okay, he's sitting back in luxury reading the scroll of Isaiah, okay, in his lap.

And he's reading it out loud.

When they would write on scrolls, and if you ever study ancient languages and you see the ancient text written on scrolls, it's not easy to read.

They saved space on the scroll because parchment was so expensive that they saved space on the scroll by putting all the words together.

There's no space, there's no punctuation, there's nothing.

It's just letters covering the whole page.

And so he's reading it out loud, and Philip, the Spirit, says, Go over there and join the chariot.

And so I just picture him, you know, like running along.

Hey, hey, what's going on?

And the Ethiopian had just been to Jerusalem, hadn't he?

So he knew what a Jewish man looked like, right?

And so he sees this Jewish man running alongside, and we don't know what he's wearing, or if he has those, you know, curly things coming down, or what he's he's got his beard probably, he's jogging along.

Hey! Do you understand what you're reading?

He's really obedient to the Lord, isn't he?

Would you do that if the Lord asked you to do it?

And he said, How can I unless someone guides me?

And so he invited Philip up to come up and sit with him.

And now the passage he was reading was this like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, like a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth.

And the eunuch said to Philip, About whom I ask you, does the prophet say this?

About himself or about someone else?

Now, the passage that he's reading here is from the prophet Isaiah.

It's from Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

In fact, while we were praying, as I often do, I quoted that part of that passage, but I want to read a little bit for you this morning.

I did not make slides for you, by the way, this morning, because I want you to open your Bibles and I want you to use them.

So Isaiah 53.

I want to start in verse one.

Who has believed what he has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces.

He was despised and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

He has put him to grief.

When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

So Philip, running along the alongside the chariot, he hears the eunuch reading out of Isaiah 53, and he says, Do you understand what you're reading?

And the eunuch says to him, Well, how can I unless someone explains to me?

Come on up.

And so Philip climbs up on his chariot, on his carriage, on his wagon, whatever it was he was sitting in, and he sits next to the eunuch, and the eunuch reads this and he says, Now who's the prophet talking about?

And let me ask you, church, who's the prophet talking about?

Who?

Does that not just read like a picture right out of the Gospels?

Do you know when that was written?

Almost 800.

Almost 800 years before the time of Jesus that was written.

Like just a picture, a description of Jesus, as he suffered for us, as the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all, as for our peace, his his he was chastised for our peace.

He bore our griefs, he carried our pain.

The eunuch is reading this and he says, Who is he talking about?

Is there a better invitation for the gospel than that?

And so it says, then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with the scripture, with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.

And so he begins to explain to him the gospel from the place where the eunuch is.

But you know something?

He could have done that from any place.

If the eunuch had been in Genesis, if he had been in Exodus, if he had been in Leviticus or Deuteronomy or Numbers, the ones that we like to pass by because they're so boring, right?

If he was in any place in the Old Testament, if he was in Psalms, if he was in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Makes me to lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the still waters, he restores my soul.

Anywhere in the Old Testament, it all preaches Jesus.

Amen.

The whole Bible from beginning to end is about Jesus.

All of it is by is for Jesus.

Remember a couple weeks ago we talked about Colossians.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, the thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

Everything in all creation and in all the word is all for and by and about Jesus.

And so he opens up the scriptures to him.

And let me ask you a question: why didn't he start in Matthew?

Why didn't he just turn to John?

You know, a lot of times we tell people who are new believers or they're searching, start in the Gospel of John.

Anybody tell me, why wouldn't he start in like the Gospel of John here instead of starting in Isaiah?

Oh, yeah, that's right.

It hadn't been written yet.

And why is that?

Because he preaches out of the Old Testament, because that's the scriptures to them.

They didn't have a New Testament yet.

That hadn't been written yet.

And so, whenever the apostles or their disciples, or even Jesus himself, as he was on the road, you know, the two disciples were on the road to Emmaus and they're talking about everything that had just happened after Jesus had been crucified, right?

They didn't know he had risen again yet.

And so they're just walking along the road and they're like, I can't believe this.

I thought he was the one, you know, and talking and just, you know, commisserating about the whole thing, and they're walking along, and suddenly Jesus appears beside them, but they didn't know it was him.

And he's like, What are you guys talking about?

They're like, Everything that just happened in Jerusalem.

What happened?

Are you the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know?

And they start talking about Jesus, and he's like, oh, slow of heart and you know, feeble and slow to believe, you know, and he opens up the scriptures and he starts teaching through all the scriptures how it all talks about him.

He taught them to read the Bible, to see the Bible in this way, to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus.

And so the apostles learned to lead the Bible through the lens of Jesus.

And so the disciples that were discipled by the apostles, they learned to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus.

And so now this eunuch's like, who is this guy?

And Philip goes, That's Jesus.

That's Jesus.

It says from that point he preached him the good news about Jesus.

In other words, he didn't just stop and say, Oh, yeah, that's when he was hanging on the cross.

And then that part's where he got, you know, his beard ripped out.

That was the crown of thorns part over here.

And then when they beat him and scourged him, and that was where he was carrying his cross, he probably went on and said, then he rose and he appeared to 500 of us, and then he commissioned us and he told us to go wait in Jerusalem, and then we waited in Jerusalem, and then the Holy Spirit came and filled us, and then like 5,000 people came into the church that day, and then there was this lame man that was sitting by the beautiful date gate and he got healed, right?

And then another couple thousand came in, and then his church just kept growing, and he said to go into all the world and make and make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to teach them to obey all the things that he commanded us, and then he says he's gonna be with us until the end of the age.

And it says in verse 36, as they were going down along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water.

What prevents me from being baptized?

What prevents me from being baptized?

So the eunuch is hearing the gospel proclaimed to him.

He hears this gospel, this good news about Jesus, that Jesus came and bore our sins.

You know, and this was a man who I believe the Holy Spirit had already been drawing him, he'd already been working on him.

There was a Jewish community that was in the area of Ethiopia all the way back then.

In fact, before that, in Ethiopia, they talk about how when the queen of Sheba came back from her visit to Solomon, the wisest man in the world, that she brought back with her Judaism.

In fact, there's another theory that she also brought back a baby with her.

But we won't talk about that one, right?

But they say she brought back Judaism.

So there was this Jewish community that was in Ethiopia, okay?

And so he's hearing the gospel.

Okay, this is a man that the Holy Spirit has already been working on, obviously.

He traveled all the way to Jerusalem trying to seek truth, trying to seek God, trying to find answers, trying to find something that will fill the emptiness.

And I want you to think about his life for a minute.

This man was a eunuch.

He didn't get a choice in that.

He didn't get to make the decision do you want to become a eunuch?

He got made one.

That choice was made for him.

And I want you to understand what that means for him.

This man didn't get to have a wife, he didn't get to have children.

He didn't get to have a family.

Now he had some cool things.

He was entrusted by the queen herself to watch over all her treasury.

He was very important.

He had prestige, he had honor, he was well respected.

He was entrusted to go on this long, long journey all the way to Jerusalem for his worship.

But he was also excluded from the normal things of life that many people get to just freely enjoy.

And there's people like that in our world today.

And sometimes we take it for granted.

We take it for granted.

I remember being a pastor who was single, and all the other pastors around me, they all had their wives.

They're like, This is my beautiful wife, Cindy Sue, you know, and my 17 kids over here.

Well, that's my wife, Elizabeth, and you know, and they're all talking, and I'm like, hey, I'm Jeff.

And you feel kind of like an outsider, you know, you feel like I'm not part of like what everybody else has.

And he had some of this.

But the other thing is, as he traveled to Jerusalem to find the living God, to try to find Yahweh, to have an encounter with God.

Maybe if I go to the city of the living God, to the temple of the living God, and I worship the living God there, maybe there I'll find what I feel like I'm missing.

And he travels to Jerusalem, and yet in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus, it talks about a eunuch.

Anybody who's been damaged in that way, they can't fully participate in the worship.

They can't approach the altar.

They can't approach, they can't come like a normal person can.

And so even he goes to Jerusalem and he's not able to fully participate.

And he's allowed to be Jewish, he's allowed to come, he's allowed to participate in ways, but not in everybody else's way.

Not in the way that just a normal Jewish man that was born there and never had that happen to him would have been able to participate.

And so he goes to Jerusalem and he leaves and he's still reading the scripture.

He's reading Isaiah.

It's like he's still searching, he still has questions, he still hasn't found answers.

But as he's traveling on this dusty road, headed back to Ethiopia, reading the scroll of Isaiah, the shepherd goes after him, doesn't he?

Jesus had told his disciples, if a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one of them goes missing, that he'll leave the 99 in the open field and he'll go in search of the one that was lost, and he'll search and he'll search and he'll search until he finds him.

And when he's found him, he'll rejoice and he'll take the lost one, put him on his shoulder, do all the work, and carry him back home.

And this Ethiopian eunuch is a man who's searching, but he hasn't been found.

But the Lord knows where he is.

And he stops Philip in the midst of a prosperous season of ministry as the Holy Spirit's moving, as people are being saved, as people are being healed, as they're being delivered from demonic oppression.

He stops Philip and he's like, Stop for a second, go out to a desert place.

And he sends them to a dusty road to meet a single man.

Reading the scroll of Isaiah.

So this eunuch who couldn't find answers, he couldn't find meaning, he couldn't find purpose, he couldn't find that thing that he was missing that the Holy Spirit was calling him to in Jerusalem.

He couldn't find it in Ethiopia, he couldn't find it on the way there, he couldn't find it on his way back.

Suddenly Jesus meets him and he's found on a dusty road on the way to Gaza.

And so as they're traveling, they come to some water and he says, Here's some water.

What prevents me?

And I just felt like as I read that question, this isn't just a casual question.

All his life he's been prevented.

All of his life, there's some reason why he can't do what everybody else can do.

He can't have what everybody else can have.

There's always some reason.

He doesn't get a choice in it, he doesn't get to it, he just gets excluded.

You go over there, you go over there, we'll handle all this.

We get to fully participate in life, but you go over there and he sits here's the gospel.

He wants Jesus.

This is what I've been looking for.

This is what I want.

That's the one I want.

I want to be baptized.

He told you to go into all the world and make disciples and to baptize them, and there's some water, and I want to be baptized.

Baptized.

What prevents me?

Come on, just give me the bad news.

I'm used to it.

Hold on.

All right, tell me.

What prevents me?

And the answer is nothing.

Nothing prevents you from being baptized.

If you believe, you may.

Because Jesus has already taken care of everything that ever would have prevented you.

He took care of all of it.

He bore your iniquities.

The chastisement for your peace was upon him.

By his stripes, you are healed.

And there's so many of us that we go, okay, that's great for everybody else.

I remember being at the rescue mission one time, Long Beach rescue mission, and I got to preach.

It was like the first time I ever got to preach, and I totally sucked, and people were falling asleep.

But I got done at the bottom, and at the end of the sermon, I came down off the stairs, and then a couple people came up, and one of the guys came up and he's like, That's real cool, you know.

I appreciate your message, but it's not for me.

And like, what do you mean it's not for you?

He's like, Well, I just mean God can't forgive me.

What do you mean by that?

You mean Jesus' blood's not valuable enough or something?

Like you're the you're the one that has the sin, he can't.

And uh, he's like, I've killed people.

And I know God can't forgive me.

He can't forgive that.

And there's so many of us that we have things in us and we think, well, it's cool, everybody else, you know, with their perfect Facebook, Instagram life, it's all bright and shiny and perfect, and they don't have all the bad things I do, and so it's great for them.

But for me, he can't forgive me.

He can't forgive me.

He can't forgive what I've done in my past.

I went too far.

I was like all the way prodigal.

I was at the end of the road, and then I went past it into the wilderness.

I was way out there.

I did all the things.

In fact, some of those things, I'm still doing them now.

The Ethiopian's like, you know what?

There's so many things.

There's so many reasons.

I'm I'm an Ethiopian, I'm an outsider.

I'm not part of the covenant people, you know, I'm not biologically Israeli.

I'm a eunuch.

I've been disincluded my whole life.

There's so many reasons.

Why don't you just tell me what's the reason?

And it says he in verse 37, in fact, there is a it's not in the ESV because it's not in all of the manuscripts.

But in the manuscripts that is in, he says, If you believe, you may.

He says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.

And when he came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more.

And went on his and went on his way, rejoicing.

Philip baptizes him.

And he comes up out of the water, and I have no idea what it means that the spirit carried Philip away.

I don't know if he got like the fiery chariot ride, you know, that Elijah got.

I don't know if it just means came up out of the water, and then the spirit just made Philip just go, yep, walk up here now.

I don't know what that means.

But the Ethiopian went on his way rejoicing.

And you know, Ethiopia has one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.

The Lord went out of his way to meet a man that no one else included, that even the law of Moses didn't include.

And found him in a place where no one was looking for him.

He left the 99 and he went after the one.

And I think we'll end here.

In verse 40, but Philip found himself at Azotis, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns and can't tell he came to Caesarea.

And so Philip goes on this secret mission, going after this one man that Jesus loved, and he baptizes him, preaches the gospel to him, he baptizes him, and the Lord says, Now go next to the next thing.

And this is what the Lord will do in our lives, too.

That we think we need to stand up here, or that this is the place where the gospel gets preached, and yet so often the gospel gets preached in the normal circumstances of our lives, in the normal day-to-day.

When you're standing behind the desk at an RV repair shop, when you're going to get a coffee at Starbucks, when you're standing in line at the grocery store.

The gospel gets preached in and through your life and in and through your words, and God will bring opportunities and he'll put somebody in your radar and go, go talk to that person.

Go give that person a couple bucks.

Go buy that person a cheeseburger.

Go get a coffee for that person.

And the question is, are you gonna rise and go, or are you gonna say, uh, I don't know, Lord, tell me a little more about your plan.

What's this gonna involve?

How long is this gonna take?

Because I only got like 20 minutes, God.

I don't have time to get into a big long conversation.

I gotta be somewhere, Lord.

But maybe he has a better plan than where you're planning on going.

Amen.

Philip found the Ethiopian on the dusty road, he baptized him, he finished the work God had him do, and immediately he sent him to the next thing.

And that's the way he works.

He was obedient in Samaria, and God sent him to the dusty road.

He was obedient on the dusty road, now God sends him to Azotis.

And as he traveled north along that road, he continued to preach the gospel.

Now later in Acts, we're gonna see that there's suddenly these little churches in these cities along the coast, and that no one ever tells us in Acts where those churches came from.

But I believe that as Philip was going along, like this verse says, he passed through and preached the gospel at all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

And so the Lord just continued to plant seeds all along the path as the gospel prospered everywhere.

Philip went and obeyed the voice of the Lord.

And it says he settled in, or he came to Caesarea.

The cool thing is we're gonna see Philip again in chapter 21, when Paul the Apostle is traveling back on his way to Jerusalem with an offering from the churches, and when he gets to Caesarea, he stays in the house of a man named Philip.

One of the seven.

And so he ends up settling in Caesarea.

And does anybody have any doubts that the Lord prospered him there too?

So the question the Ethiopian asked was, What prevents me?

What prevents me?

And his answer was nothing.

Nothing pres prevents you.

All you have to do is believe.

The Bible says if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we believe in our hearts that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Amen.

Amen.

Who's going to be obedient to the voice of the Lord this week?

I am.

Amen.

Let's pray.